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09 May 2010

Enron star Norbert Leo Butz

Photo by Joan Marcus

The Broadway production of British playwright Lucy Prebble's acclaimed London play, Enron, a highly theatrical look at the infamous case of American corporate greed, closes May 9 after the 7:30 PM performance.

The premature shuttering of the docudrama about the collapse of the Houston energy corporation was announced on May 4, the same day that the production earned four Tony Award nominations: Best Score (lyrics by Lucy Prebble, music by Adam Cork), Best Sound Design of a Play (Adam Cork), Best Lighting Design of a Play (Mark Henderson) and Best Featured Actor in a Play (Stephen Kunken).

Enron did not snag a Best Play nomination, a nod traditionally significant in boosting box office.

The May 9 evening show was added just this past week, to accommodate people (including Tony voters, presumably) who were seeking an extra chance to see the play, which divided critics. With the added performance, Enron will have played 22 previews and 16 performances by the end of the run.

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Enron, British playwright Prebble's timely-as-today's-headlines play about American corporate greed and white-collar crime, will not be repeating its London success on Broadway. Producers told the cast on May 4 that the New York production will shutter on May 9, just 12 days after opening.

For the week of April 26-May 2, according to figures provided by The Broadway League, Enron grossed $234,196, representing 66 percent of potential capacity. The average paid admission was $37.63.

Directed by Rupert Goold, Enron was embraced in London for being an audacious docudrama that uses song, movement, projections, video, masks — and naturalistic workplace scenes — to tell the real-life American corporate crime story. The Broadway transfer (featuring an American cast) opened at the Broadhurst Theatre on April 27 following previews from April 8.

The original U.K. production continues on London's West End.

For the U.S. debut of Enron, Tony Award winner Norbert Leo Butz, Tony nominee Gregory Itzin, Drama League nominee Stephen Kunken and Tony nominee Marin Mazzie play the four principal wrongdoers at the top of the Enron foodchain in Houston.

Goold and Prebble revised Enron for Broadway, streamlining the material for U.S. audiences who might have been familiar with elements of the collapse of the ambitious American energy corporation.

British playwright Prebble — who is not yet 30 years old and is known for creating the TV series "Secret Diary of a Call Girl" — didn't want to write a conventional docudrama, so she and director Goold shaped a hyper-theatrical event, wrapping multimedia, surreal images and stylized action around the a series of well-made more realistic scenes. For example, when the term "raptor" is used in reference to the entities that kept millions of dollars of debt off the books, Prebble and Goold put "Jurassic Park"-worthy dinosaur heads on actors to heighten the ruthlessness of the criminals' plans. The department run by chief financial officer Andy Fastow (played by Kunken, of Broadway's Rock 'n' Roll, Frost/Nixon and Festen and Off-Broadway's Our Town) becomes a dark, dank, subterranean world where something menacing and reptilian — primal — is nurtured.

[AUDIO-LEFT]The corporate crime shocked the nation in 2001. The play's action "takes place in Houston, Texas, between 1992 and the present day."

"It's a very well-made play that has all the drama of a great courtroom piece but at the same time it's this highly theatrical vaudeville extravaganza," Kunken told Playbill.com, in between rehearsals. "The play focuses on these four pillars [of the corporation] and then is supported by all of the different people who make up the world of the play; we've got a huge company of great actors who do that. The play, as it goes along, becomes more and more surreal as the events become more and more surreal. As Enron falls apart, so does the structure of the well-made play."

Kunken, whose Broadway credits include the non-musicals Proof and Festen, unexpectedly found himself in dance rehearsals as part of the creation of the Broadway production of Enron.

Stephen Kunken with cast members of Enron

photo by Joan Marcus

"There is an energy and a level to this that is tragic, that is almost operatic," Kunken explained. "When you get to those points, like in a well-made musical, the only place left to go is to break into song or dance. This play is pitched at a level — it doesn't break into dance or song for no reason. It does it because that's the only place left for us to go [emotionally]."

Itzin (playing Kenneth Lay) is best known for his Nixon-esque, critically acclaimed turn as President Charles Logan on FOX's action-drama "24," for which he received a 2006 Emmy nomination. Lay was found guilty of multiple charges of securities fraud in May 2006. He died of heart disease in July 2006 before he was sentenced.

Enron features scenic and costume design by Anthony Ward, lighting by Mark Henderson, music and sound by Adam Cork, video and projection by Jon Driscoll and choreography by Scott Ambler.

Enron was commissioned by Headlong Theatre, premiered in summer 2009 at the Minerva Theatre Chichester, and then moved for a six-week run at the Royal Court Theatre in London where it played through Nov. 8, 2009. The play transferred to West End's Noel Coward Theatre Jan. 16, where it continues.

Prebble won the George Devine Award and the Critics' Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright for her debut play The Sugar Syndrome at the Royal Court Theatre. On television, her work includes creating the series "Secret Diary of a Call Girl." Enron is her second play.

Goold's previous productions include Minerva Theatre Chichester's staging of Macbeth with Patrick Stewart (that transferred to the West End and Broadway) and Six Characters in Search of an Author. Additional credits include Time and the Conways at the National Theatre, Pete Postlethwaite in King Lear, and West End productions of Pinter's No Man's Land and Oliver! (currently at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane). He most recently directed Turandot for English National Opera which opened at the London Coliseum in October.

Enron tickets are on sale at telecharge.com, at The Broadhurst Theatre (235 W. 44th St. between 8th Avenue and Broadway) or at (212) 239-6200.